The two releases that excite me the most this week are Ip Man and Red Cliff II, both imported Region A Blu-ray discs of amazing Hong Kong films. They’re tough to get a hold of and hard on the wallet if you do track them down (Amazon.com has them both for around $60 US). The Red Cliff films, directed by John Woo will be making their way to North American shores sometime later this year and Ip Man, the story of the Kung Fu master who trained Bruce Lee, is such a major film that we’ll no doubt see a domestic release at some point. Best to hold off purchasing and save your money for this week’s pick:
PICK OF THE WEEK FOR MAY 5 – THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON
Again, I find myself recommending the Blu-ray disc of a movie I’ve yet to see. However, since this is an Oscar nominated film directed by the brilliant David Fincher and released on Blu-ray by Criterion, I doubt you’ll go wrong with this investment.
Benjamin Button, the story of a man (Brad Pitt) who is born in his eighties and ages in reverse, comes to us in a brilliant looking 2 disc deluxe collection from Criterion, packed with incredible special features that, according to early reviews I’ve read, rival or best the finest supplemental material ever found on any other home video release. The first of the two discs houses a 44.2GB AVC MPEG-4 encode of the film, almost entirely maxing out the capacity of the dual layer disc! Just to prove they’re the best at what they do, Criterion also manages to squeeze a commentary with director, Fincher onto the bloated Blu-ray. Well done!
Disc two again sees Criterion pushing capacity, cramming almost 44GB of extras onto another dual layer Blu-ray. The bulk of the special features combine several featurettes into one long 3 hour documentary covering all elements of the filmmaking process from development and preproduction to in depth examinations of the ground-breaking special effects all the way to the premiere of the film. Still galleries and production designs are spread throughout and accessible separately.
ALSO AVAILABLE THIS WEEK
Clicking an image will take you to Amazon.com where you can learn more about the Blu-ray
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